By Carolina Garcia
Executive Editor, Monterey (Calif.) County Herald

I grew up in South Texas, the youngest of six children, raised by an uneducated single mother. I started school unable to speak English but finished by acing every test. I was part of the Chicano movement marching for civil rights. It took me 10 years of night classes in three states to get a bachelor's degree in mass communication. I landed my first journalism job because of the color of my skin and the sound of my name.

That was more than 20 years ago. In the years since, I've proven to myself that my entry into the business was no gift, nor was it part of a new lower standard for people of color because newspapers needed people like me to balance the color bars in their personnel books. We still need to hire and keep people like me, not to impress a census count, but to balance the pages of our newspapers.

Good journalism is about the right stories, photos, and graphics and presenting it so that readers get it quickly and easily. It's also about supporting, promoting, and pushing journalists, fresh or seasoned, encouraging them to give their best for themselves, for their newspaper, and for their community.

As editor now of a small newspaper in the Central coast of California, I find that I cannot hide behind the layers of a large newspaper. Where change once seemed difficult, it now seems possible.

Very possible. I have found it invigorating to make change, to take creative risks, and to hire a diverse staff to better reflect our values. In less than year, our newsroom's diversity more than doubled, increasing from 12 percent to more than 26 percent. 

Changing the players in a newsroom doesn't necessarily translate into new content. The next challenge is to change, to grow, and to more wisely pursue new readers.

This Values Moment was originally presented at the recent ASNE convention.